The N-Word. Is It Ever OK to Say?

Nigger.

Without question, this is the most loaded word in the English language. Six letters. Say it three times and you've got the number of the beast. Forged white-hot in the fires of hell, that word has, for half a millennia, been seared into the collective psyche of black people in America. N-I-G-G-E-R. Though buried under layers of keloidal scars, those letters still ache and throb like a recent burn, a painful, disfiguring memento of our past -- an unhealed wound on the souls of black folk.

This is "hate speech" -- an entirely different category from your garden-variety cuss words. When you get down to it, there's very little inherent rationale for the taboo status of words like "shit" and "fuck." They're just combinations of letters, rarely used literally, that we've learned to be offended by. Nonetheless, I try not to piss people off without a good reason, and so, heretical linguistic leanings aside, I tailor my speech to the sensibilities of the reader/listener.

What makes me really uncomfortable, though, is "nigger" and its cousin, "nigga." I generally don't F wit' the N-word(s). I'm quick to playfully deride those who euphemize regular curse words (saying "Darn" when we and they know damn well they meant "Damn"). But I'm so self-conscious about ni**er that even when writing it, I generally self-censor, adding asterisks. As if that makes a bit of darned difference.

The reason for my discomfort? Words like nigger, and hate speech, in general, have an added dimension of meaning, a historical intent to cause harm, communicate a threat or symbolize a power dynamic. There's a saying that goes, "It ain't what you call me, it's what I answer to." In the not-too-distant past, black folks had no control over what others called us, and reflexively, we co-opted the N-word, fashioning myriad alternative meanings and usages of it in an attempt to take the sting out of it. That's why the N-word is so unique among hate speech -- it's now used most frequently by the very people it was meant to oppress.

The word now simultaneously connotes a subhuman, inferior species worthy of scorn and death, and yet it is also used synonymously with friend, or, depending on inflection, best friend. Which is problematic.

"Nigger," I can talk about easily enough -- it's a mirror held up against the sins of white folk, a case study of pathology and human deprivation.

"Nigga," on the other hand, is like chitlins. I understand where it came from and why it exists, but damn, can't we do better by now? "Nigga" is dirty laundry. "Nigga" is a window on the conflictedness of our people. Not that we don't have a right to be conflicted. Shit. We reserve that right.

Nigger.

I first heard the term as a child. I'm not sure exactly where I was, it may have been the playground, but I recall hearing it in a "black on black" context, as in don't "act like a nigger." I grew up in a small, mixed, but mostly African-American town in South Jersey. I remember using it my first time and being chided by my uncle, Gregory, who told me it was a bad word. "Why?" I remember asking. He told me, using a definition he'd no doubt gotten from Grammom Wilson (my maternal great-grandmother), that a nigger is an "ignorant person."

Hmm ... I didn't know a whole lot about niggers, but I'd heard that they looked like me, so I needed clarification. "Can white people be niggers?" I asked. "Yep," he said. "White people can be niggers." Made sense to me. I didn't say the word again, and my curiosity was satisfied.

My father had a, shall we say, more pragmatic approach to the N-word. By the time I was in junior high, he added to my knowledge of the N-word. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, in a black neighborhood, but attended an almost all-white Catholic high school. He played several sports, and often found himself to be only one of two or three black people in the gym or stadium, let alone the court or field. He'd hear the word thrown at him by opposing fans and players, and would take out his frustrations using the game, itself, affirming his right to exist via a stiff elbow, a crushing block or punishing tackle.